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The following is an un-edited introduction to a volume edited by
Jill Ker Conway, Kenneth Keniston, and Leo Marx, called Earth, Air,
Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the Environment, which will be
published in 1999 or 2000 by the University of Massachusetts Press,
Amherst, MA. The volume contains 13 essays divided into three
sections: Historical Studies, Social Studies, and The Question of
Modernity. The table of contents is appended, followed by the
introduction to the entire volume. Special thanks to Prof. S.
Sadogodan, Director of the Indian Institute of Information
Technology, Bangalore, Karnataka, India, for the Sanskrit
inscription and translation at the beginning of this book. TABLE OF
CONTENTS Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the
Environment Foreword………………………………………………………………………....1 The New
Environmentalisms………………………………………………..….......5 Jill Ker Conway,
Kenneth Keniston, Leo Marx I. HISTORICAL STUDIES Introduction
(JKC)………………………………………………………………50 Gregory Nagy (Harvard University)
-- "As the World Runs out of Breath: Metaphorical Perspectives on
the Heavens and the Atmosphere in the Ancient World"………......59
Donald Worster (University of Kansas) -- "Climate and History:
Lessons from the Great Plains"……………………………………………………………………………83
Stephen J. Pyne (Arizona State University) -- "Consumed by Either
Fire or Fire: A Prolegomenon to Anthropogenic
Fire"…………………………………………………………..............................122 John
F. Richards (Duke University) -- "Only a World Perspective is
Significant: Settlement Frontiers and Property Rights in
Early-Modern World History"……………….....................160 II.
SOCIAL STUDIES
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Introduction (KK)………………………………………………………………187 Richard White
(University of Washington) -- "Environmentalism and Indian
Peoples"………………………………………………………………………...194 Terence Turner
(University of Chicago) -- "Indigenous Rights, Environmental
Protection and the Struggle Over Forest Resources in the Amazon:
The Case of the Brazilian Kayapo"………………………………………………………………………….226
Barbara Epstein (University of California/Santa Cruz) --
"Grassroots Environmental Activism: The Toxics Movement and
Directions for Social Change"………………………...........262 Oleg N.
Yanitsky (Russian Academy of Science) -- "Russian Environmental
Movements"……………………………………………………………………...283 Bina Agarwal (University
of Delhi) -- "Gender Equity and Environmental
Action"…………………………………………………………………………...318 III. THE QUESTION OF
MODERNITY Introduction (LM)………………………………………………………………..393 Anton
Struchkov (Russian Academy of Science) -- "Modernity and the
Environment as a Public Issue in Today's
Russia"…………………………………………….........400 Jill Ker Conway & Yaakov
Garb (MIT) -- "Gender, Environment, and Nature: Two Episodes in
Feminist Politics"………………………………………………..444 Louis Menand (City
University of New York) -- "Modernity and Literary
Theory"…………………………………………………………………………..473 Leo Marx (MIT) --
"Environmental Degradation and the Ambiguous Social Role of Science
and Technology"………………………………………………....495
Authors…………………………………………………………………………..522
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Appendix A: MIT Workshop on "Humanistic Perspectives on the
Environment"…………………………………………………………………….526
INTRODUCTION Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the
Environment 5/12/97 The New Environmentalisms Jill Ker Conway,
Kenneth Keniston, Leo Marx Fifty years after the atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima the conviction of environmental
crisis to which it gave rise has intensified. The first use of a
nuclear weapon in 1945 made
humanity aware that it had acquired the power to inflict
irremediable damage on the biosphere, a
destructive power that might even lead to human self-extinction.
As it turned out, in fact,
Hiroshima was only the first in a series of events that seemed
to portend an ecological
apocalypse.
In the aftermath of Hiroshima, the intellectual results of this
mounting anxiety were immediate,
profound, and lasting. In the academy the first members of what
would become a large and
steadily growing international cohort of scholars -- most of
them scientists -- began to work on
problems of nuclear contamination. But in subsequent years the
range of fearful ecological
problems was enlarged by the discovery of such new (or hitherto
undetected) hazards as the
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potential "nuclear winter" phenomenon; global climate change;
the depletion of the ozone layer;
and the accelerating rate of species extinction. With each
discovery an alarm was sounded, and
the worldwide fear of an impending ecological disaster
intensified. By now that fear has been
extended to the damaging effects of many everyday technologies,
and we see harm lurking in
such innocuous sites as the local garden shop, with its lawn
fertilizers and gas-powered mowers,
or the supermarket with its array of detergents and chemically
improved meats and vegetables.
Responding to these fears, a set of new environmentalisms has
emerged -- movements,
arguments, and analyses that target the new, or newly
identified, environmental problems of the
late twentieth century. To be sure, men and women were concerned
with preserving their
environment long before Hiroshima. But in the last decades,
initiated by the use and testing of
nuclear weapons, impelled by books like Rachel Carson's Silent
Spring, embodied in local
groups like the Love Canal activists, and highlighted by
disasters like Chernobyl, Bhopal, and
Three Mile Island, armed with regulatory power through
governmental bodies like the
Environmental Protection Agency, the new environmentalisms have
acquired unprecedented
public support and political importance. Despite their major
differences, these
environmentalisms share a concern with today's apparently
unprecedented and accelerating rate
of environmental degradation.
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To cope with this degradation, the prevailing assumption both
within and without the academy
has been that for self-evident reasons it is scientists who bear
the major intellectual
responsibility. When we think of the forms of environmental
decline calling for most urgent
attention -- eroding soils, shrinking forests, deteriorating
rangelands, expanding deserts, acid
rain, drained aquifers, stratospheric ozone depletion, the
build-up of greenhouse gases, air
pollution, poisoned water supplies, and the loss of biological
diversity -- it seems only logical
that scientists should be the people mobilized to tackle these
problems.
It also seems obvious that the human sciences, the term we use
to embrace the humanities and
humanistic (non-quantified) social sciences, have little to
contribute to our understanding of
these threats to the biosphere. Until recently, humanists
themselves accepted this popular
assumption. What can Homer tell us about nuclear winter? How can
students of language help
halt the destruction of forests? Surely only scientific experts
are capable of discovering a hazard
like the greenhouse effect. And clearly only scientists can
monitor it accurately, and thus,
perhaps, devise effective remedial measures. Where else should
we look but to scientific
expertise for the resolution of problems resulting from the
interaction between the peoples of
modern societies and nonhuman nature?
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And yet, having said that, it is the seemingly self-evident
nature of this response that should give
us pause. As cultural historians have often demonstrated, the
more obviously self-evident a
human response to change seems, the more likely it is to embody
an unconscious, or largely
unconsidered, reflex of the prevailing collective mentality.
This is not to imply that all such
"common sense" responses are skewed or misleading, but they
often are, and in the case of
environmental degradation there are good reasons for skepticism
about the humanists' failure to
engage with the problem. Notice, for example, the heavy burden
of ideological assumption
carried by the heavily scientific, technological names we
routinely use to designate
environmental problems. (Few kinds of behavior are more
revelatory of cultural bias than
naming practices.) Each of the labels mentioned -- eroding
soils, shrinking forests, acid rain .... --
designates an environmental problem by naming its chief
biophysical symptom. Missing entirely
are the simple, short everyday words by which people actually
refer to their biophysical world --
earth, air, fire, water. The labels convey no hint of human
agency. They seem to convey that such
forms of environmental deterioration are spontaneously occurring
"natural" (i.e., non-human)
biophysical processes. Such a designation places the entire
process of environmental
deterioration within the realm of expertise of scientists who
study natural phenomena.
Once we examine them critically, these names are highly
misleading because, although they
locate such phenomena as acid rain or soil erosion in the
biophysical realm, not one of them is in
fact wholly attributable to the operation of natural (non-human)
processes. Each, in fact, has its
origin in human behavior, in complex socio-economic practices
with long histories. So, although
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it is not impossible, it is highly unlikely that any of them
could be corrected or compensated for,
by a simple technological fix. In fact, these nature- and
science-oriented names mask the fact that
such phenomena are forms of damage to the environment that
cannot be ameliorated or corrected
without extensive long-term changes in social behavior -- such
as prevailing beliefs and attitudes
toward the interaction of humanity with nature. Amelioration
does not require exclusively
scientific knowledge, but rather changes based upon law and
public policy, on institutional
structures and practices, on habits of consumption, and
countless other facets of daily life.
So, to understand, or to devise effective solutions for today's
environmental threats, we must
locate them within their larger historical, societal, and
cultural setting. Only when they are
placed in this context will they be recognizable for what they
are: immediate, short-term, partial
manifestations of the increasingly heavy burden that modern
urban industrial societies place
upon the finite capacities and resources of the biosphere. The
root problem of this demand is
human, not physical, not natural -- although, of course,
scientists, engineers, and other technical
experts can help us chart its dimensions. Once we have framed
the issues in this way we can see
that many, perhaps most, of our most pressing current
environmental problems come from
systemic socio-economic and cultural causes. So their solutions
lie far beyond the reach of
scientific or technical knowledge -- and, to answer an earlier,
seemingly rhetorical question -- all
the disciplines which elucidate human behavior and the
functioning of social and cultural
systems are essential for the understanding of environmental
issues, and for devising effective
approaches to their amelioration.
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This book, then, is an effort at correcting our deceptive
nomenclature, by locating ecological
problems in the behavior of human beings -- in the human
institutions, beliefs, and practices
which mediate between humankind and that obscure but beautiful
non-human world which we
call "nature". It opens with a section devoted to the elements
and the way humans have
understood them in past times. It continues with a section
devoted to social institutions and the
ways in which we can learn from current and past efforts to
understand the interaction between
man and nature. The concluding section analyzes the culture of
modernity and the ways in which
the human imagination has changed in response to the arrival of
modern technology -- for it is
this change which has contributed most significantly to our
distancing of the human from the
natural phenomena we now consider to be the exclusive concern of
scientists.
As a framework for the examples of humanistic studies of
environmental thinking which make
up these three sections, we lay out some major concerns which
any humanist proposing to work
on environmental subjects will encounter. These arise from
critical oppositions inherent in
current thinking about humans and their interaction with
nature.
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The "Constructed" and the "Real" Environment
One of the first questions confronting humanists who work on
environmental problems is: what
constitutes reliable knowledge of the natural world? Or, put
differently, the problem is knowing
how to steer a reasonable course between two equally extreme
viewpoints: naive positivism (or
realism) and all-embracingsocial constructionism (or the
assertion that what we call "nature" is
merely a figment of our cultural imagination).
The positivistic position assumes that reliable, unmediated
knowledge of "nature" or the
"environment" is obtainable by means of direct senseperception,
and that it may then simply be
added to the cumulative findings of science. Those findings are
assumed to constitute a true
picture of the world. This picture is not considered problematic
or seriously influenced -- unless
based on erroneous data -- by the unique position of the
observer, his or her outlook, history, or
culture. Nature, environment, and the world are a transparently
accessible domain of
incontrovertible fact.
Those who hold the second, constructionist view regard what we
call "reality" as in actuality a
kind of narrative, or "text", that we construct about our
surroundings. Such narratives are in some
measure unique to each individual, and they invariably are the
distinctive products of particular
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historical contexts, cultures, and social groups with particular
interests -- especially national,
economic, class, racial, or gender interests. Thus the notion of
the "environment", or "nature", as
a transhuman reality disappears; it is replaced by a variety of
interpretative lenses through which
individuals convince themselves (falsely, of course) that they
are seeing something beyond -- not
reflective of -- their subjectivity, or the distinctive
positions they occupy in specific social and
cultural settings. In particular, the radical social
constructionists deny the hegemony of scientific
knowledge as the only truly reliable -- or, as they say,
"privileged" -- conception of the world.
Science is thus merely one among many lenses on the world, a
lens with no justifiable claim as a
source of superior knowledge. To the constructionists the
humanists' task is to understand,
analyze, and deconstruct discourse about nature and our
environmental dilemma, and in the
process to challenge the illusion that we have access to the
ostensibly "real", knowable
environment.
To state these two positions in this extreme, caricatured form
is to underscore the latent
contradiction that often makes itself felt in humanistic inquiry
into environmental issues.
Concepts like environment, nature, wilderness, are often assumed
to be constructs whose
contours are defined less by "objective" reality than by the
interests, history, and other
presuppositions of the observer. Thus, many recent humanistic
studies of the "environmental
crisis" have been studies of writings about the crisis, or
studies of definitions and "constructions"
of the crisis, rather than studies of the ways that human
beings, through their culturally- and
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historically-influenced behaviors, help to aggravate or
ameliorate the condition of the
biophysical world that surrounds them.
The familiar parable of the blind men trying to describe the
elephant, each insisting that a leg, a
trunk, or tusk is the whole of the beast, is a useful analogy
for our own thinking. We agree with
the "social constructionists" who insist that the world -- and
especially large interpretive concepts
about the world like "environment", "wilderness", and "nature"
-- is invariably seen from a
particular vantage point and through a particular lens
constituted by history, culture, and
individual idiosyncrasy. There are indeed many "natures",
"environments", "ecologies", and
"wildernesses", as scholars insist.1 But the parable of the
elephant derives its ultimate meaning
precisely from the fact that there is an elephant -- a real
elephant -- which each blind man only
partially describes.
As human beings and adherents of a culture, therefore, we have
no way of seeing other than
through the lens of our own culture, history, and personality.
But the fact that we each see the
world from a distinct context and a unique perspective in no way
denies the world's existence; on
the contrary, only if there is a world to be seen through our
different lenses does the act of
perception make any sense. Analogously, arguments over the
meanings of "nature", or of
"wilderness", in no way deny the existence of a non-human
biophysical reality over whose
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characteristics we may argue. In fact the existing non-human
biophysical reality constitutes a
large part -- usually most -- of what people perceive, and what
they disagree about.
We share, then, the belief of most natural scientists that "the
environmental crisis" is real, that it
is global as well as local, and that science gives us an
especially reliable and useful -- though not
unique -- way of understanding the crisis. But of course the
natural sciences make no claim to a
deep or sophisticated understanding of the dimensions of life
that derive from human behavior,
culture, personality, social organization, or history. Quite the
contrary: the sciences most
engaged in the study of the environment are mute when it comes
to the human (or
"anthropogenic") sources of recent environmental problems. Thus
computer models of the
impact of greenhouse gases on global climate often include
projections of the increases in CO2
emissions likely to result from human activities over the course
of the next century. But the
question of why or whether humans are seen as likely to increase
CO2 emissions is not one that
atmospheric scientists try to address. To explore that question,
the methods of humanists and
social scientists are needed. Several years [how long??] after a
major international effort to
integrate scientific studies of the global environment (The
International Geosphere-Biosphere
Programme: A Study of Global Change, or IGBP) was organized, a
"Human Factors" group was
finally established -- as if in belated recognition that, after
all, the activities of people are at the
root of virtually all the world's most pressing environmental
problems.
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Another reason to doubt the exclusive authority of the
scientific viewpoint is that scientists rarely
achieve unanimity on environmental issues. They can differ among
themselves as much as non-
scientists do about the meanings, implications, causes, and
remedies of environmental problems.
Scientific knowledge of the environment tends to be new, hence
contested: it is rarely
established, "textbook" knowledge. Like all frontier knowledge
in science, knowledge of the
environment is thus peculiarly susceptible to conflicting
interpretations, alternative forecasts, and
disputed remedies.2 In analyzing these conflicts it is
important, though by no means sufficient, to
acknowledge their cultural origins -- their roots in differing
perceptions, politics, interpretations,
interests, and histories. As with all contested, "frontier"
knowledge in science, moreover,
continued exploration and lively debate also is needed, for that
alone can transform contested
knowledge into scientifically established, if always open to
reexamination, "textbook" truths.
We acknowledge the importance -- more perhaps than most
humanistic inquiries -- of scientific
findings. We accept their legitimate claim to special if limited
authority and usefulness, but at the
same time we stress the obligation of humanists to study the
ways that human beings actually
interact with -- not merely talk about -- nonhuman nature.
Humanists and humanistically inclined
social scientists have a double task. On the one hand, humanists
can (and do) contribute to an
understanding of environmental discourse -- the ways that ideas
about nature (including
scientific ideas) embody extra-scientific interests and
presuppositions; the historical origins and
shifting meanings of central concepts (like "nature",
"environment", and "wilderness"); the role
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of the socio-economic and political context, culture, ideology,
and history in forming the lenses
through which we perceive and interpret the biophysical
world.
At the same time, humanists and their social scientist partners
have a second but often neglected
task: to study the precise ways that culturally- and
psychologically- patterned behavior
contributes to the despoliation of the environment, and to the
possibility -- or impossibility -- of
alleviating it. It is important, for example, to understand the
steady, worldwide growth of
"consumerism", its changing character over time and across
cultural boundaries, and its
relationship to today's well-nigh universal quest -- even in the
richest nations whose populations'
"basic needs" have long since been satiated -- for a
continuously rising "standard of living".
Similarly, it is important to understand why some people are
politically mobilized -- and others
are not -- against perceived environmental problems, be they
global in scope (like CFC
emissions) or local (like the water pollution, deforestation, or
the exhaustion of arable land).3
Varieties of Environmental Experience
In carrying out any such analysis we must recognize the
instability and ambiguity of the term
"environmentalism". Almost no one professes anything but good
will toward "the environment"
or its protection; yet few social movements elicit greater
hostility than -- or embody such deep
divisions and bitter controversies as -- the diffuse collection
of ideas and groups labeled "the
environmental movement". The "environmentalism" of the National
Rifle Association and of
sports trophy hunters is no less passionate than that of deep
ecologists and the "tree hugging"
members of Earth First! To be sure, mainstream environmentalists
regard the
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"environmentalism" of international paper companies or the
nuclear power industry as self-
interested, exploitive, and manipulative. Although none of the
authors in this volume endorses
the views of those corporations, we are reluctant simply to
charge them with hypocrisy, but
would prefer to see them as embracing a different conception of
the environment, based on
different historical time spans, different interests, and
different assumptions about the essential
relationship between humanity and nature. One of the essential
tasks of the humanist, therefore,
is to disentangle some of the meanings of
"environmentalism".
While the classifications that follow are somewhat arbitrary and
tentative, we think them a useful
introduction to the essays that follow. They serve to highlight
that there are many varieties of
environmentalism; many sets of attitudes, values, and beliefs
subsumed within the omnibus term
environmentalism.
Ecocentrism and Anthropocentrism
Nowadays environmental thinking is widely assumed to be
polarized between two opposed,
probably irreconcilable doctrines: ecocentrism and
anthropocentrism. Ecocentrism is a moral
philosophy whose exponents, a vocal minority of
environmentalists, are dedicated to changing
radically the way we think about humanity's relations with
nature. They look upon mainstream
environmentalists as weak compromisers who may inveigh against
the despoliation of the
environment, but who in practice are all too accommodating to
the despoilers. Such weak
compromising is predictable, the ecocentrists contend, because
reform environmentalists and
despoilers, whatever their differences, are indistinguishable in
one crucial respect: both assume
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that our chief reason for protecting the environment is its
usefulness to ourselves, to human
beings. But nothing we could possibly do to arrest the
accelerating devastation of the global
ecosystem would be more effective, from an ecocentric viewpoint,
than to rid ourselves of the
complacent illusion that nature exists to serve humanity. "No
intellectual vice is more crippling,"
writes the Harvard sociobiologist and ardent ecocentrist, E.O.
Wilson, "than defiantly self-
indulgent anthropocentrism."4
The radical transformation of human consciousness envisaged by
Wilson and his fellow
ecocentrists -- which they see as a belated accommodation to the
inescapable dictates of
biological reality -- would be as profound as that which
followed the discoveries of Copernicus,
Newton, or Darwin. It entails acceptance of the far-reaching
implications they draw from an
unarguable fact of nature, namely, that homo sapiens is only one
of the myriad, intrinsically
valuable, interdependent species on Earth, and their conclusion
that we therefore have no right to
reduce the diversity of life, or to assess the worth of other
forms of life -- or even, for that matter,
of inanimate parts of nature -- merely on the basis of their
value to ourselves. To satisfy our basic
needs, of course, humans might continue to kill some animals,
consume plants, and use nature in
various other ways. But these and all other human activities
should henceforth be restricted by
the ruling imperatives of ecocentrism: to live lightly on the
earth, to restrict the scope of
technological innovation and intervention, and to treat all
forms of life -- and all parts of the
cosmos -- with reverence, responsibility, and care.
The intellectual genealogy of the ecocentric doctrine leads back
to the religious origins of
contemporary attitudes toward the nonhuman environment. The
ecocentric lineage may be
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traced, by way of the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess, to
modern nature writers like Rachel
Carson, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir; to poets and novelists like
Robinson Jeffers, Gary Snyder,
D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy; to the great Romantics,
Rousseau, Coleridge, Wordsworth,
Blake, Goethe and - especially for their shaping influence on
American attitudes toward nature -
the prominent Transcendentalists, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry
Thoreau. Almost without
exception, these writers accorded the natural environment a
reverence of the kind - and of the
intensity - their forbears had reserved for divinity.
Emerson and Thoreau, in particular, were pivotal in effecting
the transition, in America, between
predominantly theological and predominantly secular views of
nature. They played a role
analogous in many ways to that that played by Coleridge,
Carlyle, and Wordsworth in England,
Rousseau in France, and Goethe in Germany. But the religious
roots of Emerson's and Thoreau's
environmental thinking seem more obvious. They patently were the
heirs of Jonathan Edwards,
the greatest philosopher produced by New England Calvinism, and
of three or four generations
of Puritan thinkers who preceded him. Although they adopted a
less explicitly religious language
to discuss human interactions with the environment, that
discursive change was somewhat
misleading, for it disguised the degree of underlying continuity
between their ideas and those of
their religious precursors.
Thus Emerson, a descendent of a long line of New England
ministers, began his career as a
Unitarian pastor, and he never stopped thinking of nature - to
invoke his formulation in the
seminal boo Nature (1836 - as "the present expositor of the
divine mind." His mature philosophy
was a somewhat idiosyncratic amalgam of Anglo-German Romanticism
(much of it indirectly
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borrowed from the 18th-century German Naturphilsophen),
post-Kantian idealism (above all
Schiller's version), and his hereditary Yankee
protestantism.
Thoreau, who was fourteen years younger, began his career as
Emerson's disciple; at first he
adopted most of the Transcendentalist doctrine, but he soon too
a more independent course. He
became a knowledgeable woodsman and amateur naturalist, and he
developed a distinctive
literary style based on the exact observation and depiction of
natural facts. The purest examples
of his brilliant nature writing are to be found in his immense
Journal. But his most popular and
influential work, Walden (1854), also conveys a passionate
aversion to the dominance of society
by an acquisitive commercial ethos that issues in a well-nigh
systematic degradation of the
environment. In his nature writing, Thoreau exemplified a
pragmatic yet worshipful attitude
toward nonhuman nature that now has made him the patron saint of
ecocentrism.
Unlike the ecocentrists, who emphasize the attributes humans
share with other species, the
anthropocentrists hold that we humans have a unique
responsibility as stewards of the
environment. That responsibility derives in part from religious
doctrine, such as the biblical
injunction (in Genesis) "to replenish the earth, and subdue it,
and have dominion over ... every
living thing that moveth upon the earth," and in part from
humanity's manifestly distinctive
capacities -- intellectual, moral, technological -- to manage
the resources of Earth. The concept
of "resource management" is a hallmark of the anthropocentric
relationship with the
environment. Environmentalists of that utilitarian persuasion
remind us that most species that
ever existed are extinct; that the history of nature is marked
by unceasing change; and that
though each species modifies its habitat in some degree, the
extent to which humanity's
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modification of its global habitat exceeds that of all other
species amounts to orders of
magnitude. To the charge that anthropocentrism represents an
arrogant, self-serving presumption
of human superiority, the anthropocentrists respond by charging
the ecocentrists with what
appears to be an even more arrogant refusal to accept the
responsibility, for which homo sapiens
in the uniquely qualified species, to oversee the maintenance of
a life-enhancing ecosphere.
We are presenting the dichotomy between ecocentric and
anthropocentric environmentalism in
its sharpest, most melodramatic form. To be sure, each of these
extreme viewpoints has its
adherents, but they constitute a small minority. Most active
environmentalists, as well as most
members of the general public who advocate the protection of the
environment, almost certainly
hold opinions of a measured, pragmatic, utilitarian -- or
anthropocentric -- tenor. But however
unrealistic or impractical the severe ecocentric code of
environmental probity may seem, it
nonetheless provides a challenging long-term goal of harmonious
accommodation to nonhuman
nature, and the unillusioned recognition of certain
unmodifiable, bedrock imperatives of human
survival. The value of ecocentrism, like other visionary, or
utopian, doctrines, is to generate
long-term aspirations -- to educate desire.
Apocalyptic vs Gradualistic
A parallel, closely related, spectrum of opinion along which
environmentalists differ is defined
by the degree of urgency they bring to their proposals. The
ecocentrists tend toward a more
extreme, even apocalyptic sense of urgency, whereas the
anthropocentrists are more likely to
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advocate a temporizing, gradualist agenda. They consider it more
prudent and effective, in the
long run, to make haste slowly.
At the apocalyptic extreme is the view that the environmental
"crisis" has already reached
catastrophic or near-catastrophic proportions: we currently risk
the destruction of the habitat of
humankind and of most species through actions already taken or
imminent. Typical culprits are
global warming, the proliferation of toxic chemicals, the
population explosion, the pollution of
air, water, and earth, and the accelerating rate of species
extinction. In this apocalyptic view, the
carrying capacity and recuperative powers of the planet have
been exceeded or are about to be
exceeded. Barring massive immediate changes in human behavior,
irreversible and catastrophic
destruction -- including the death of billions of human beings
and the possible extinction of life
on the planet -- will result.
This apocalyptic view is typically accompanied by calls for
far-reaching changes in the way we
live, organize our institutions, and view the world. Apocalyptic
environmentalism is analogous
to -- and indeed often has historical roots in -- millennial
religious movements, with their
inherited notions of imminent destruction and their calls for
dramatic and total reform,
repentance, and spiritual reawakening. Indeed, the modern sense
of an oncoming ecological
apocalypse owes a great deal to the ancient Christian tradition
of millennial evangelism and
fundamentalism. In the United States, where today's "deep
ecology" and ecocentric doctrines
draw heavily on the writings of the New England
transcendentalists, especially Emerson and
Thoreau, there is a direct line of descent from the
eschatological tenor of the Puritan churches
(via John Muir and the Sierra Club, for example) to ecological
apocalypticism. In eighteenth-
-
century Western thought, moreover, there was a widespread
tendency to transfer qualities
previously reserved for divinity to an abstract, post-Newtonian
concept of Nature. Thus the
despoliation of the environment has come to have close
affinities with the kinds of mortal sin
which merit severe divine punishment.
At the opposite extreme is the gradualist, take-no-rash-action,
we-do-not-know-enough view that
is especially common among scientists, politicians, and
spokesmen for industry. Gradualists
stress the admitted uncertainty of many scientists who work on
ecological problems, and they are
concerned about the harmful effects of action taken prematurely,
in the absence of certain
knowledge. They are less impressed by the rapidity than by the
slowness of changes in the state
of the environment, and consequently they stress the ways that
recent human, political, and
economic actions already have achieved improvements. Thus, for
example, they point to the
positive results of the environmental protection laws, or
international agreements, adopted in the
last twenty years by the industrialized nations. Above all,
gradualists stress the hazards of taking
action in the absence of firm, truly reliable knowledge.
It is easy to attribute self-interest to gradualism when it is
adopted by spokesmen for
corporations and other institutions called upon to adopt
economically and humanly costly
innovations. But this view also is held by many who have no
self-serving economic or political
interest in deferring action. They insist on the inadequacy of
existing models of environmental
change, the uncertainties of ecological knowledge and theory,
and, most important, the human,
economic and social costs of taking the more radical measures
advocated by the
environmentalists of the most apocalyptic cast of mind. Whatever
the environmental toll of the
-
pesticides, tube wells, herbicides, and "artificial" fertilizers
associated with the Green
Revolution, for example, their immediate abolition would
dramatically diminish the world's food
supply. This might be ecologically sound from a long-term point
of view, but in the short term it
probably would produce massive food shortages, and it might well
result in the death from
starvation of millions, even billions, of people. Gradualists
contend that as yet we have no sure
evidence of irreversible environmental damage, and that remedial
or preventive action should
await a knowledge of its consequences.
Materialism vs Idealism
Another divide between environmentalists separates those who
believe that environmental
problems are in essence material or technological problems from
those who regard them as in
essence problems of consciousness, values, or beliefs. For the
latter, the environmental dilemma
is largely ideological, spiritual, aesthetic, cultural, or
psychological in character. In contrast, at
the materialist extreme are those who assume that history is
generally a record of continuous,
cumulative, steady progress, and who see contemporary
environmental problems as the result of
inadequate and poorly conceived technologies like polluting
energy sources, unsafe nuclear
reactors, toxic organophosphates, inadequately re-processed
industrial wastes, or automobiles
with excessively damaging exhausts. For them the central
environmental problem resides in
inadequate or antiquated technologies or in methods of
intervention in the environment
developed without adequate knowledge of their potential results.
They stress the malign impact
of the law of unintended consequences.
-
Almost invariably, then, gradualists contrive, and
optimistically endorse, technological solutions.
The "green technology" movement, with its emphasis on "reducing
the waste stream", on
devising "cleaner forms of energy production", on "fail-safe
third generation nuclear reactors",
on non-polluting or low-polluting methods of transportation,
typifies the optimistic views of
those who conceive of both the problem and the solution as
technological. As a president of MIT
once put it, "The answer to bad technologies is not no
technologies, but good technologies."
At the other extreme are those who view the ultimate sources of
environmental problems as
essentially moral, spiritual, aesthetic, ideological, or
cultural in character. Our relations with
nature do not originate in tangible, material circumstances so
much as in the beliefs, values, and
meanings of which whole ways of life -- entire cultures -- are
constituted. "Tis said," Emerson
once remarked, "that the views of nature held by any people
determine all their institutions."
Thus the assumption that nature exists to serve humankind is
decisive. It manifests itself in the
culturally shaped -- and instilled -- desire for standards of
living far beyond those necessary for
the maintenance of life and health, the advent of "consumerism"
propelled by a powerful
advertising industry whose purpose is to create "needs" for new
products which the population
never knew it needed (VCRs, high definition television sets,
automatic bread makers, computers,
etc.), and most important a "materialist" mentality that places
the satisfaction of material needs,
particularly acquisitive and consumerist needs, ahead of
non-material aesthetic, moral, or
spiritual satisfactions -- these are seen as primary causes of
the environmental crisis.
The solution, accordingly, lies not in better scrubbers or
cleaner catalytic converters or safer
nuclear reactors, but rather in a massive transformation of
culture -- of human aspirations: a
-
willingness to dispense with superfluities, and a widespread
embrace of a life of "voluntary
simplicity". This would entail a radical change of values: a
relinquishment of the pursuit of a
steadily rising level of consumption (standard of living) in
favor, as society's chief economic
goal, of equitable sufficiency. Instead of an economy committed
to limitless growth, the primary
aim of this relatively ecocentric economy would be to dispense
with many superfluities, and
concentrate on providing the truly necessary material goods to
all the world's people. In this
view, fulfillment would be identified with the achievement of
satisfying human relationships,
with the life of the mind and spirit, and with the effort to
achieve a more harmonious coexistence
with nature. In short, the non-material aspects of life would be
given priority over the anticipated
benefits of increasing human control of nonhuman nature. The
call, then, is for a transformation
of collective consciousness, a renunciation of today's pervasive
consumerism, and the
abandonment of that obsession with technological and economic
"progress" that dominates the
lives of people in virtually all contemporary societies.
Primitivism vs Presentism
Another critical distinction between environmentalisms and
environmentalists is related to their
evaluation of the mindsets, outlooks, and practices of
"primitive" (i.e., pre-modern) and/or non-
Western peoples. Often associated with an ecocentric and
millennial outlook, the "primitivist"
outlook sees pre-modern and non-Western societies as an
important source of ideas and practices
that could help solve contemporary environmental problems. The
outlook of pre-modern
societies is often characterized as animistic, as not drawing
decisive distinctions between
humankind and the rest of nature, as committed to "living
lightly on the land", and above all to
-
showing a loving respect and concern for all living things. Some
primitivists look with special
admiration on the spiritual reverence with which certain Native
American tribes regarded animal
or vegetable totems, and others encourage the re-creation of
pre-modern rituals or the deliberate
search for wilderness experiences as a means of recovering a
direct relation with Nature.5
One variant of primitivism looks less to pre-modern societies
than to non-Western societies, and
in particular, to those societies that are not influenced by the
Abrahamic tradition of God-given
"dominion" over nature -- i.e., not by Judaism, Christianity, or
Islam.6 In societies like India or
Japan, it is said, even today people have a more reverential,
more "ecological" attitude toward
the biophysical world. One Japanese observer claims, for
example, "Nature is at once a blessing
and friend to the Japanese people. ...People in Western
cultures, on the other hand, view nature
as an object and, often, as an entity set in opposition to
humankind."7
At the opposite pole are those who question the relevance of
pre-modern and non-Western
attitudes to contemporary environmental problems, and/or who
deny the claim that these
attitudes are truly "environmental" in any useful contemporary
sense. Some critics of primitivism
point out that pre-modern societies have often despoiled and
even destroyed their environments,
and argue that many previous civilizations have collapsed
because of self-created ecological
disasters. Others question whether non-Western societies like
Japan are truly environmentally
oriented in any comprehensive way. For example, one student of
Japanese environmental
attitudes argues that the Japanese "reverence for nature" is in
fact a "highly restricted" attitude,
"confined to particular species or individual animals,
frequently admired in a context
emphasizing control, manipulation or contrivance."8
-
Most important, those who reject the views we are calling
"primitivist" believe that
contemporary environmental problems are sui generis -- unlike
those faced by any previous
civilization. They chiefly attribute today's problems to the
enormous expansion in human
understanding of, control of, and power over the environment
brought about by the scientific,
technological, and industrial changes of the last two centuries.
Modern societies have the
technological power to destroy their environment and perhaps,
indeed, to cause irremediable
damage to the global ecosystem, whereas previous societies did
not. Having "wilderness
experiences" on plastic rafts roaring down rapids created by the
timed release of water from an
upstream hydroelectric plant -- such experiences may replenish
the spirits of those who can
afford them, but they do not truly speak to the major
contemporary, environmental problems, all
of which involve complex socio-technological systems. And it is
simply not clear to critics how
simple reverence for nature or pre-modern rituals, even if they
did characterize pre-modern and
non-Western societies, can help us deal with contemporary
problems like global warming, acid
rain, ozone depletion, or toxic chemicals.
Worldview vs Issue
Another contrast between environmentalisms is that which
separates environmentalism viewed
as the fulcrum of an embracing, comprehensive philosophy of
life, society and politics, and that
which views the preservation of the environment as simply one
important value among other,
possibly equally or more important, objectives.
-
The contention that environmentalism is -- or should be --
central to an all-inclusive philosophy
of life and social organization is closely associated with
certain millennial, spiritual, and global
perspectives. The essential claim, as with ecocentrism, is that
a drastic reorientation of existing
values is required, such that the first criterion of every
individual action, social policy, or
political act should be its bearing on the preservation and
enhancement of the environment. At
the individual level, environmentalism therefore means adopting
lifestyles characterized by
"voluntary simplicity"; at the social level, it requires a
redesign of all social institutions to
enlarge those that preserve the environment and to eliminate
those that degrade it; at a political
level, it means re-organizing policy and politics, and perhaps
even redefining political
boundaries so as to promote environmental preservation. So seen,
environmentalism is an
overriding philosophy, sometimes described as a "new" worldview,
which must supplant
consumerist, capitalist, socialist, individualist, or other
allegedly environment-destroying
outlooks.
The alternative view sees environmental preservation as only one
among other important social
values -- for example, social justice, economic development,
human rights, and the fulfillment of
individual ambitions. Proponents of this view deny that
ecological principles constitute an
adequate base for an entire philosophy, and note that there are
environmentalists of every
political stripe from the reactionary right to the radical left.
Other values, such as equity and
individual liberty, may at times compete and conflict with, and
deservedly override
environmental values. Reverence or care for nature in itself
tells us little about how we should
organize our daily lives, our social institutions, and our
political affairs. In the Northern
industrial societies, to be sure, environmentalism is today
usually associated with a "left wing"
-
point of view; but in the 1920s and 1930s, some ardent
environmentalists were ultra-
conservatives or fascists who saw nature worship as a part of an
embracing rejection of
contemporary industrial society and a return to values of blood
and brotherhood. Similar
alliances between environmentalism and ultra-conservatism are
seen today in Russia, where
some environmentalists, dubbed "eco-fascists", combine a
reverence for the vast, unspoiled
Russian taiga with anti-Semitism, anti-industrialism,
xenophobia, opposition to democracy, and
the call for a return to a command-and-control economy. In
short, the defense of the environment
provides inadequate guidance as to how to organize life,
society, or the polity: for that, we need
additional goals and values. Environmentalism, however
important, does not in itself constitute
the basis for a comprehensive worldview.
Global vs Local
Another distinction among environmental movements is between
those that adopt global, and
those that adopt local, perspectives. Global environmentalists,
who have emerged as a powerful
force in recent decades, stress the worldwide despoliation of
nature. The objects of their concern
are trans- national, indeed planetary. They began, in the era of
nuclear weapons testing, by
stressing the dangerous spread of radioactivity around the
world, and they then moved on to
concerns over acid rain, CFC contamination, the diminution of
biological diversity and stability
as a result of human activities, the menace of overpopulation,
the global threat produced by over-
fishing and modern agricultural methods, and, perhaps most
important in the late 1990s, the
threat posed by global warming and related changes in the global
climate.
-
Such global changes, it is argued, threaten to end -- or already
have ended -- the concept of
"nature" as an accessible realm free of human intervention.9 By
now the very sky above is
polluted by CFCs, ozone, and greenhouse gases created by human
activity. Nothing in our corner
of the cosmos is left unaltered, uncontaminated by human
interventions. The fragile layer of
earth, water, and air which sustains human activity on the
surface of Earth is threatened, and its
protection must be given the highest priority for remedial
action. Globalists applaud the Montreal
agreement to ban CFCs; they urge reduction in the emission of
carbon dioxide, especially by the
industrial nations; they worry about the increase in other
greenhouse gas releases in the
industrializing nations. Most of those who express such global
anxieties are not -- at least not yet
-- personally affected by the trends that alarm them, but they
have informed intellectual,
idealistic, and scientific reasons for concern about the future
of the planet.
The concerns of local environmental movements are very
different: they habitually focus on a
particular problem in a particular locale, and involve those
immediately affected by the problem.
Thus the so-called "toxics movements", usually led by women
concerned for the welfare of their
families, are directed against specific local dangers. These
movements, in most cases limited in
the scope of their concern to a single local problem, are a
worldwide phenomenon as
characteristic of India and Kenya as of the United States and
Norway. Epitomized in the United
States by the activist residents of Love Canal, they direct
attention to, say, a dam in India that is
being built to support industrial development and alleviate the
national shortage of electric
power, but that also threatens the living space of tens of
thousands of villagers; a toxic waste
dump, often located in a community of poor and unempowered
minority citizens; the proposed
location of a nuclear plant near a downwind village; the
industrial pollution of a what had been
-
until recently a pristine lake in Siberia -- thousands of such
local movements of resistance to
local despoliations have arisen on every continent. To some
observers they constitute today's
most energetic and promising form of environmental action. They
have suggestive common
attributes: they are usually led by women; they typically
mobilize individuals not previously
active in environmental movements; they often activate those who
are dispossessed,
propertyless, or politically inert; with a few notable
exceptions, they resist affiliation with larger,
national groups; and they tend to disband once their local
objectives have been achieved.10 The
chief point, in any case, is that these movements devote their
energies to coping with concrete,
visible, palpable local problems.
Ecofeminist vs Material Feminist
One of the more striking dichotomies in environmental outlooks
is that found within the feminist
movement. At one extreme are ecofeminists, who base their view
of the nature and remedies for
environmental degradation upon an essentialist construction of
male and female temperaments,
in which men seek power over nature and women protect and revere
the earth and its fecundity.
At the opposite extreme are material feminists who argue that in
specific circumstances,
particularly in third world countries, the undermining of
inherited gender roles and rights,
usually through mistaken transposition of Western gender
ideologies, has resulted in
mismanagement of land and water resources, and the production of
cash crops in place of
traditional food staples, mobilizing women because they are most
immediately affected by these
changes.
-
Ecofeminists clearly fit within the millennial, spiritual
renewal spectrum of environmental
thought, since they argue that the planet will be destroyed by
male aspirations to technological
power over nature and by the male quest for ever more powerful
nuclear and biological weapons.
As a counterbalance to this assumed male drive they propose
return to worship of the mother
goddess, and revived reverence for the earth and for the
fertility of nature. In this sense
ecofeminists seek to convert humankind to a spiritual revival
based upon worship of the feminine
principle, pacifism and a return to a prehistorical, simple
agricultural society.
Material feminists, on the other hand, see some successes in the
efforts to preserve women's
rights to use over land in parts of South Asia and Africa, and
in educating development agencies
about women's role as the primary food producers in much of Asia
and Africa. Their programs
seek political solutions through which rights of use over land
can be converted to female-owned
property, the harvesting of forests can be carried on respecting
traditional women's knowledge of
forestry, and government plans for transforming land tenure
systems can recognize female as
well as male rights within village societies. They also favor
agricultural education schemes
targeted at women food producers, rather than at males who do
not till the soil.
In general, ecofeminist ideas are global and ecocentric, while
material feminists are concerned
with specific local issues and fine-grained studies of why
women's food producing role has been
ignored in development projects in specific regions. While
highly critical of gender hierarchies,
material feminists do not essentialize male and female
temperaments, nor are they opposed to
technology provided women have equal access to its use and equal
voice in its control.11
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North/South: Conflict vs Community
Almost from the beginning of environmental debate, the
differences and parallels between the
interests of the "North" -- the highly industrialized nations --
and those of the "South" -- the poor,
less developed, or "developing" nations -- have been discussed.
A major divide in debates about
the relationship between economic development and environment is
the degree to which conflict
between North and South is stressed as opposed to community of
interest.
The conflictual analysis emphasizes that the industrialized
nations of the North, above all the
United States, are the principal contributors to worldwide
pollution, and especially to those
processes we label "global change". Per capita outputs of almost
every known man-made
pollutant are highest in the United States and in other
industrialized nations. "Southern" nations,
in contrast, with low per capita incomes, greater reliance on
agriculture, and low energy outputs,
produce less global pollution both on a per capita basis and on
an aggregate basis, even though
the South constitutes 75-80 percent of the world's
population.
Given the commitment of the South to economic development,
environmental conflict with the
North seems inevitable to many. For example, were the nations of
the South to reach the same
levels of per capita environmental degradation as the North, the
carrying capacity of the Earth
might well be exceeded, with catastrophic results. It is claimed
that China and India alone, which
together contain one-third of the world's population, have the
capacity to overwhelm the planet's
environment should they reach the levels of per capita pollution
that characterize the United
States.
-
When this analysis is accepted, two conclusions are usually
drawn: that the nations of the South
must limit or strictly control their economic development,
and/or that the nations of the North
must radically reduce their own level of environmental damage to
make ecological "room" for
increased development -- and pollution -- from the South. To the
nations of the North, then, the
ideal solution might be to try to slow the development of the
Southern nations, and/or to insist on
their use of complex (and expensive) environmental technologies
like scrubbers, "green"
production facilities, low-polluting energy sources, etc. To the
nations of the South, in contrast,
the obvious answer is for countries like the United States to
reduce dramatically their own levels
of environmental degradation.
Emphasizing the conflict between North and South usually entails
the further assumption that the
wealthy nations are those most concerned with environmental
preservation, whereas the poor
ones are chiefly concerned with economic development. Only when
a high level of economic
development has been reached, it is assumed, are people likely
to adopt "post-industrial" values
like environmentalism. In the impoverished nations,
environmental concerns must take a back
seat to issues of subsistence and economic growth.
An alternative perspective stresses instead the areas of
similarity and potential collaboration on
environmental issues between North and South. It emphasizes that
most environmental problems
are global in nature, and so are their solutions. Loss of
biodiversity, the destruction of forest
cover, global warming, degradation of soil, salination of arable
land, depression of water tables,
the depletion of the ozone layer, acid rain, the poisoning of
land, animals, and people through
-
intensive use of pesticides -- all affect the developing nations
in as great or greater measure than
they do the industrialized world.
Underlining the global nature of environmental concern and
problems, poll studies show that
individual attitudes of environmental concern bear no
relationship to the level of economic
development of the nations studied. For example, more Filipinos
and Nigerians say they are
personally concerned about the environment than do Americans. As
the authors of one study
conclude, "Conventional wisdom is wrong about the existence of
major differences and levels of
environmental concern between citizens of rich and poor
nations."12 In short, the notion that
concern with the environment is a "post-industrial"
characteristic of the rich or the rich nations,
is incorrect.
A final argument supporting the community of North and South is
the similarity of the
arguments and movements organized around the environment in both
parts of the world.
Wherever they are tolerated by political authorities, as in
India, citizens' movements to protect
the environment in developing nations are extraordinarily like
those in, say, the U.S. or Northern
Europe. The structure of discourse and debate about the
environment, the conflicts within
environmental movements, the arguments over the most efficacious
means of protecting the
environment differ little in Latin America, Africa, and Southern
Asia from that occurring in
Scandinavia, Australia, or the United States.
Wise Use vs Forever Wild
-
The contradiction between the "wise use" and "forever wild"
attitudes toward nature has given
rise to political controversy in the United States for at least
a century. A specific variant of the
anthropocentric/ecocentric dichotomy, its political
ramifications are exemplified by the Hetch
Hetchy controversy in Yosemite, California in the late
nineteenth century. At that time, engineers
working for the city of San Francisco, whose aim was to dam the
Hetch Hetchy River as a new
source of city water, came into sharp conflict with John Muir
and his allies, all militant
preservationists.13 The arguments of the dam builders
anticipated the later "wise use" doctrine --
today most often advocated by lumber companies, ranchers,
hunters, and other land owners --
which holds that nature is a reservoir of energy and other raw
materials for human use. (A
corollary of the doctrine holds that property rights entitle
landowners to compensation for any
economic losses incurred as a result of environmental
regulations.) People are entitled to use
natural resources by means, for example, of the judicious
"harvesting" of trees at reasonable
intervals; "culling" flocks of wild animals for human
consumption; "taming" wilderness areas to
prevent flooding; "controlling" undesirable species like wolves,
coyotes, bears, and jaguars. The
goal is to render the natural environment productive, pleasant,
and agreeable for human use. If a
species, such as wolves, poisonous spiders, scorpions,
rattlesnakes, require elimination, and if
that can be shown to benefit humankind, then it may be done; if
clearcutting proves to be the
most efficacious long-run mode of harvesting timber, then
non-material, aesthetic, or sentimental
considerations -- and, in some cases, rules for the protection
of endangered species -- should be
subordinated to the material needs of the population.
At the other extreme is the "forever wild" or "wilderness"
preservation outlook. It is exemplified,
for example, by the deed of Baxter State Park surrounding Mount
Katadyn in Maine, or in the
-
"nature preserve" movement in the former Soviet Union. Here,
what remains of the unspoiled
biophysical environment, far from being regarded as a source of
society's material "resources", is
seen as a sacred or quasi-sacred place with an inherent claim to
inviolacy. Lovers of wilderness
regard the natural landscape as a source of spiritual and
aesthetic nourishment, but only if it is
left in its pristine, untouched, or "wild" state. For people
without faith in a supernatural divinity,
the unspoiled reaches of the natural world, which existed prior
to the evolution of humanity, and
which presumable will outlast humanity, constitute the only
remaining locus of transcendence.
The Russian nature preserves are an extreme example: they are
substantial areas of "wilderness"
from which the entire population (other than attendants and
working scientists) is wholly
excluded. In the United States today, those who wish to prevent
"harvesting" of forests, mining
of minerals, or grazing of cattle on public lands almost
invariably embrace some variant of the
"forever wild" view.
In recent years, however, the concept of "wilderness" has come
under sharp postmodernist attack
as a typically deceptive social construction. After all, the
vast areas of North America that
arriving white European settlers called "wilderness" had for
centuries been home to some
millions of Native Americans. It is easy to demonstrate that
what we Americans call
"wilderness", especially when it refers to areas of our National
Forests and National Parks, is an
elaborately constructed cultural artifact. Recently, the
environmental historian William Cronon
offended many ardent adherents of the "forever wild" school by
arguing that we should dispense
entirely with the misleading, indefensible space-oriented
concept of "wilderness" -- wilderness as
a topographical entity -- and transfer our allegiance to the
spatially neutral concept of "wildness".
Wildness, as identified with aspects of life unmodified by human
intervention, can exist
-
anywhere, indeed everywhere. It is inherent in our own being.
Thus, Cronon suggests, a bird in a
city, say a migrating warbler in the Ramble area of New York's
Central Park, is as wild as it
would be anywhere else. Wildness is not restricted by space.
Recall that Thoreau's famous
dictum, motto of the Sierra Club, is "In Wildness [not
Wilderness] is the preservation of the
World."14 Thoreau, like other nineteenth-century American
writers, thought of "wildness" as an
attribute of homo sapiens as well as other animal species. In
any case, many recent debates in the
United States about the use of public lands, endangered species,
and environmental regulations
generally, have involved aspects of the conflict between
adherents of "Wise Use" and "Forever
Wild".
Government Intervention vs Market Changes
Another recurring distinction in environmental debates, finally,
is between interventionist and
individualist, market-based approaches. In essence, this
opposition turns on the issue of which
agency (or tactic) is most effective in resolving environmental
problems. From an interventionist
vantage, isolated individual human actions, however sincere, are
of little avail in a complex,
highly institutionalized, advanced, tightly organized, urban
industrial society. Even if 100
percent of the population recycled all household wastes, they
argue, it would have almost no
impact on the major sources of environmental degradation, which
are industrial, military, and
governmental. Barry Commoner argues that the most notable
successes of environmental policy
have entailed the simple prohibition by public authorities of
the use of toxic substances like
DDT, lead in gasoline, or CFCs.15 The results, as measured by
the diminution of toxicity, have
been immediate, dramatic, and progressive. The general principle
is that intervention by official
-
(governmental) mandate -- i.e., regulation -- is usually the
best means of improving
environmental quality.
The opposing view is that only individuals who are acting
because of changed economic
incentives in a free market can in the long run effect a
reduction in environmental degradation.
Rejecting direct governmental regulation as bureaucratic,
inefficient, and easy to circumvent,
proponents of "free market" environmental measures propose
instead such indirect market
interventions as taxes on environmentally undesirable behaviors
or products, the use of sellable
"pollution rights" to encourage industrial conservation of
resources, or efforts to "internalize
externalities" by market mechanisms that oblige organizations
and individuals that do
environmental damage to pay the real long-term costs of
repairing the harms they do. At the
extreme, free market environmentalists may even argue that, in
the end, all environmental
problems will be solved simply by the automatic mechanisms of
the market. For example, as oil
supplies are exhausted, the price of oil will rise so steeply
that individuals and firms will be
obliged to find other energy sources and to conserve oil. When
government action is warranted,
it is only to enforce, reinforce, or strengthen market
mechanisms; not to intervene directly
through regulation, standard-setting, and difficult-to-enforce
requirements.
It is obvious that there are natural affinities or likely
groupings between the positions we have
separated above. For example, ecocentrists tend to emphasize the
spiritual as opposed to
technical nature of environmental problems, to view
environmentalism as an aspect of an all-
embracing worldview, and to see environmental problems in a
global, millennial perspective.
Conversely, those who believe that environmental problems are
largely technological in nature
-
tend to be gradualists, to see environmentalism as one among
many issues rather than as a
complete philosophy, to stress the uniqueness of contemporary
environmental problems, and so
on. Like other cultural values and political outlooks,
environmental attitudes tend to come in
"packages" or clusters of associated ideas.
It seems pointless (and misleading) for us to try to identify
any one viewpoint, or any one cluster
of ideas, as "true" environmentalism -- the rest, presumably,
being "false". As humanists,
however, we deplore, as limited and ultimately inadequate,
environmental programs involving
exclusively technological solutions. We insist on the need for
enhanced comprehension of the
extra-technological -- human, cultural, psychological,
political, and religious -- dimensions of
any effective inquiry aimed at instituting better measures for
arresting the deterioration of the
global environment.
We have been increasingly struck by the realization that many of
the views we now refer to as
dichotomous are in fact not as incompatible as we (and others)
had assumed. Thus there are
issues to which the extreme ideas of the apocalyptic
environmentalists quite reasonably apply,
and where immediate action must be taken if irreversible damage
is to be avoided. The banning
of CFCs, which evidently contribute to the long-term destruction
of the upper ozone layer, is a
case in point. But there are other issues where a prudent
gradualism makes sense, for example,
involving the causes and remedies of global warming. In that
case present knowledge is limited,
and existing models do not enable us to predict catastrophe if
we fail to take immediate, costly
action, even though prudence would nonetheless seem to justify a
serious international effort to
reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. Nor do we view
innovations in technology as
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necessarily incompatible with preserving the spiritual benefits
of our relations with nature. On
the contrary, the well-being of the environment seems to involve
importantly both changes in the
values that issue in rampant consumerism -- including a
willingness on the part of the rich
nations to alter their behavior with a view to reducing
inordinate levels of environmental
pollution -- and, at the same time, changes in technology that
will permit them to do so and
permit other nations to realize their justified aspirations for
a more adequate standard of life
without overloading the planet's fragile environmental
balance.
In one area, however, we have taken sides: while we appreciate
and understand the ultimate,
long-term educative value of the ecocentric doctrine, we believe
that it is untenable in the
foreseeable future. Or, rather, we believe it is much less
tenable than the anthropocentric view
that stresses the material and political needs of humankind. To
be sure, conflict between the
human species and other species can and should be reduced and,
if possible, avoided. But in the
end, we believe that the ultimate justification for
environmental preservation, far from inhering
in the absolute and equal rights of all species, is humanity's
moral obligation to its own kind.
Moreover, without a reasonable improvement in the degree of
equity in the conditions of human
life, no resolution of our environmental problems is
conceivable. Anthropocentrism, as we would
endorse it, does not provide a rationale for ravaging nature to
satisfy the trivial needs of human
beings; rather, it means preserving the environment, protecting
it, nursing, shepherding, and
husbanding it precisely because we, as human beings, so
desperately require a flourishing global
landscape.
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In our view, many aspects of contemporary environmental thought
involve issues of major
concern to humanists. The scholar of the humanities has
disciplinary training to elucidate the
millennial and apocalyptic nature of much environmental writing,
the authoritarian assumptions
behind many plans to coerce changes in consumption, the
uninformed idealization of traditional
cultures and their environmental practices, the essentialist
view of gender differences enshrined
in ecofeminism. All of these views of human history,
expectations about the future, and
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wholesale rejections of contemporary science and technology
touch on deep themes in the
modern and post-modern consciousness.
Environmental thought today also raises issues once thought
settled in the age of the
Enlightenment. Is there such a thing as progress? What is the
moral standing of animals, plants,
forests, groundwater? Are we to face a Malthusian future in
which population will outrun
resources? Does consumerism touch such deep structures in the
human psyche that we cannot
imagine a cultural era based upon rational voluntary restraints
on consumption? Are North/South
concerns about environmental issues really so different? Our
analysis of the patterns of thought
represented in Indian environmentalism, for instance, shows the
same dichotomies we have
identified for the West. These should alert us to the
possibility that thought about man and about
nature as cultural category may be more global than our current
focus on ethnicity and cultural
difference allows.
The Humanities and the Environment: What is to be Done?
Despite the importance of such questions, our efforts to engage
humanists in systematic work on
environmental issues were often unsuccessful. We thushave asked
ourselves whether there are
ways in which the professional training of humanists and the
ends toward which they direct their
work might be reformulated so as to bring the human/non-human
environmental relationship into
sharper focus.
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We see this question as important partly because of the
postmodern attack on the ideas of the
Enlightenment, which is one way the professional training and
ethos of humanists has been
altered, often negatively, vis-à-vis environmental issues. For
one of the consequences of
postmodernism lies in its defining a broad range of questions or
intellectual territories as outside
the sphere of the humanities, that is, as not part of the
humanist task to explore what it means to
be human. Among these questions are a number central to the
understanding of contemporary
environmentalism.
For example, the preparations for our workshop involved a search
for an art historian who could
explicate how the history of representations of nature might
illuminate the non-verbal and
emotional changes which have accompanied environmental
degradation. Artists only began to
paint landscape after land defined as private property became
the norm. And the history of art
shows us how nature gradually became merely a backdrop for human
being in early modern
times. Be we were able to find no tradition of seeking to
understand what that change means in
terms of the human/non-human relationship.
We also searched in vain for an economist or historian of ideas
who could help us understand
just when and why humans became defined as and encouraged to be
insatiable consumers. Our
workshops helped us to see that in the wealthy modern societies
consumption is as powerful a
cultural activity as production, and that the "masses," Marxist
theory notwithstanding, exercise
aesthetic judgments and sensibilities as consumers. But much
humanistic thought has been based
on the demeaning notion of "mass society" as devoid of aesthetic
concerns, a point of view
shaped in part by European émigré's encounter with Fascism as a
mass phenomenon.
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Professional training which contested these received ideas from
a variety of cultural perspectives
would be a valuable preparation for teaching and research in the
humanities today.
The contemporary study of ethics does indeed address issues
raised by the need to constrain or
redirect consumption in the interests of intergenerational
environmental equity. But we found
that much remains to be done to move such concerns into the
everyday language of the
humanities. We believe that they need to be much discussed as
say, the impact of the machine on
the human imagination, or the alienation of the landless poor
following the closing of the
commons.
The discipline of history has in recent years shown a growing
concern with the study of events
that occur outside a human timescale: For example, the impact of
climate on changes in
vegetation, the rise of sea levels, and other natural phenomena.
But the standard professional
training of historians as yet places little systematic emphasis
on the understanding of such
macro-environmental events, leaving "nature" as much of a
backdrop to the historian as it was to
the Renaissance artist. Moreover, while there are now many and
controversial accounts of the
relationship between the exhaustion of resource bases and the
expansion of ancient empires,
those themes are rarely treated as standard in the professional
preparation of historians who study
the contemporary era.
The humanities and the social sciences converge in the study of
myth; but here, too, we found
little systematic study of apocalyptic imagery in contemporary
environmental thought, and even
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less analysis of those mythologized "traditional societies"
which are often invoked to instruct late
twentieth century men and women about how to live in supposed
harmony with nature.
The final section of this volume deals with the problem of
modernity, a problem which calls for
systematic inquiry in all humanistic disciplines concerned with
environmental issues.
Postmodernist theory has made many contributions. It is a useful
corrective to the frequent
modernist rejection of Technology. Postmodernism also contains
an invaluable commentary on
imperialism and its cultural rationalizations, embodiments, and
consequences. It rightly insists
upon the breakdown of barriers between the organic and the
engineered, barriers which were
central to the modernist mentality.
But there remain many crucial environmental issues to be
investigated by postmodernist
thinkers. Should environmentalism abandon totally the
Enlightenment concern with human
reason? Is the 18th century stress on religious toleration
irrelevant to human experience in Serbia
and Croatia today? While it is undoubtedly true to note that war
crimes are defined by the
victors, are there not some universal notions of human rights
which should inform our responses
to the local and tribal conflicts of today, to the degradation
or exhaustion of natural resources, or
to the abuses of power seen in modern commercial imperialism?
Central among these questions
are concerns for the rights of women and men to use common land
and forests and to retain some
balance between rural and industrial/ commercial life. Though
these issues are usually defined as
economic, as having to do with development policies, they are
also humanistic, having to do with
human/non-human environmental relations in the context of
contemporary politics.
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Recent years have shown a steady movement by humanists toward
sustained analysis of
environmental issues. Many of the authors represented in this
volume have been leaders in that
movement. But this work also reminds us that much remains to be
done: The humanities and the
humanistic social sciences have barely begun to scratch the
surface of sustained inquiry into
environmental issues. Environmental questions, we believe, must
be central to the concerns of
humanists, preoccupied with the most fundamental questions of
human existence. A humanistic
training that neglects environmental issues sets the humanities
at the margins, rather than at the
center of modern concerns. To the skeptic who questions the
relevance of the humanities to
environmental issues, we commend these essays as examples of the
fruitful linkage of the
humanities and the environment.
ENDNOTES
1. For a provocative collection of essays, most of them
exemplifying this viewpoint, by scholars
in many humanistic disciplines, see William Cronon, ed.,
Uncommon Ground: Toward Inventing
Nature (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995).
2. See S. Jasanoff, Science at the Bar: Law, Science, and
Technology in America (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
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3. The perspective here developed accords closely with that of
Riley Dunlap, especially in R.
Dunlap and W. Catton, "Struggling with Human Exemptionalism: The
Rise, Decline, and
Revitalization of Environmental Sociology," The American
Sociologist (Spring 1994), 25:5-30.
4. E.O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1978), p. 17.
5. Current issue of Social Policy (Sept. '96 ?).
6. Lynn White.
7. Murata, quoted in S. Kellert, [[add article]], Journal of
Social Issues (1993), 49:53-69.
8. Riley E. Dunlap, George H. Gallup, Jr., and Alec M. Gallup,
"Of Global Concern: Results of
the Health of the Planet Survey," Environment (November 1993),
35, 9:36.
9. See, for example, Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York:
Random House, 1989).
10. FN re important exceptions; reference to volume.
11. See Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies, Ecofeminism (London and
New Jersey: Zed Books,
1993) and Bina Agarwal, A Field of One's Own: Gender and Land
Rights in South Asia (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
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12. Dunlap, et al., op. cit.
13. Michael Smith.
14. See William Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness; or,
Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,"
in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing
Nature (New York: W.W.
Norton, 1995), pp. 69-90. For a series of critical responses to
this argument, including a reprint
of the essay and a response by the author, see Environmental
History, I (January 1995), pp. 7-55.
15. Commoner.
INTRODUCTION Earth, Air, Fire, Water: Humanistic Studies of the
Environment